NAM is the official provider of online scientific reporting for the
8th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment
and Prevention (IAS 2015), which will take place in Vancouver, Canada,
19th-22nd July 2015.

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Search through all our worldwide HIV and AIDS news and features, using the topics below to filter your results by subjects including HIV treatment, transmission and prevention, and hepatitis and TB co-infections.

Medical procedures and other blood-borne exposure news

For so much activism to focus on blood donation rules is to get fixated on the wrong inequality. What should be getting all of us outraged is the reason for this different blood donation treatment - the vastly higher rate of HIV amongst gay men compared with the general population.

Lifetime bans on gay men donating blood may be justified as long as authorities have no access to “less onerous” methods of keeping blood supplies free from sexual infections, according to a ruling from the EU’s highest court.

The findings of the Penrose Inquiry into the contamination of blood supplies in the 1970s and 80s have been published. Thousands of people were infected with Hepatitis C and HIV through blood transfusions and blood products.

The people of the farming community of Roka in Cambodia are living through exactly the nightmare scenario that the World Health Organisation wants to stamp out with a new policy on syringes. In wooden huts and farmhouses dotted among paddy fields, families are struggling to cope with the bombshell of a sudden and frightening mass infection of HIV.

Ms. Mao, 55, is among more than 200 villagers in this rice farming community in western Cambodia who tested positive for H.I.V. last month. The Cambodian authorities say that an unlicensed doctor who reused syringes and other medical equipment spread the infection. Even in a country inured to hardship and suffering, the infection of such a large number of people within a radius of a few miles was shocking.

Former Stormont health minister Edwin Poots’ ban on gay men giving blood in Northern Ireland was infected by apparent bias, a High Court judge ruled yesterday. Mr Justice Treacy also held there had been a “very troubling lack of candour” and attempt by the Democratic Unionist MLA to conceal the fact he had taken a decision to maintain the lifetime prohibition. He also backed claims by lawyers for a homosexual man that Assembly comments showed Mr Poots stance was influenced by his Christian beliefs.

As the number of villagers testing positive for HIV continues to climb in Battambang province’s Roka commune, the Health Ministry is scrambling to rein in the illegal medical practices that may have led to the outbreak and are widespread throughout the country.

The British Government is considering whether to conduct a study into whether gay or bisexual men in monogamous, same-sex relationships should still have to wait 12 months after having sex to donate blood.

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